


Strange, Impossible Things

by Dorasolo



Series: Strange, Impossible Things [1]
Category: Ant-Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-03
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-02-16 20:26:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18698560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorasolo/pseuds/Dorasolo
Summary: A small blossom of hope unfurls in his chest as Barton’s cell phone starts ringing. Scott is heartened to think that Hope is alive somewhere in San Francisco. Maybe she’s looking for him right now the way he’s been looking for her.Endgame POV from the world’s greatest grandma.





	1. San Francisco

Scott Lang has developed a tolerance, even a liking, for strange, impossible things. He’s been in a suit that shrinks his body down to microscopic sizes. He’s used the same suit to stand 85 feet tall. He frequently rides an ant like a winged horse. His partner and girlfriend is Hope Van Dyne, the smartest, bossiest, hottest woman, and strangely, impossibly, she wants to be with him, too. Sometimes naked.

So, when he wakes up in a storage unit far from where he remembers being just a few hours ago, he tells himself not to panic. When it takes a little while to get out of the storage unit, and there are only rats to keep him company, he tells himself not to panic. When he gets out with an old shopping cart full of his stuff, it’s getting hard not to panic, but he still keeps it together. 

Hope was supposed to pull him out of the Quantum Realm, but she didn’t. It’s hard to tell what the right thing is to do in this situation, but it can’t possibly be having a panic attack in a public park, so he pulls his head out of his ass and leaves. 

He runs, sprints really, to his ex-wife Maggie’s house, because he assumes that’s where his daughter Cassie must be because her name is miraculously absent from the maudlin monuments.

San Francisco is definitely weirder than usual on his way to the house, but he can barely focus on his surroundings. When he gets to the house and a taller and much older Cassie answers his pounding on the door, he manages to hold his shit together because he’s already surrendered to the idea that things are completely different than they were yesterday.

Cassie cries when she sees him, he hugs her, then he cries, and the entire process repeats when Maggie gets home. Cassie calls Luis to tell him that Scott is alive. Scott can hear Luis’s reaction through the phone. 

“I’m so sorry about Paxton, Mags,” Scott says, once he realizes that Paxton is not just at work, and she nods once and looks away. She seems composed, but she’s had five years to grieve.

Luis arrives in a commotion and he, Maggie and Cassie explain what they know about Thanos, basically space alien Grimace with a nutsack for a chin who snapped his fingers and wiped out half of all of the people on the planet. Neat. Great.

“Not just the people,” Cassie tells him. 

“Yeah, not just the people, Scotty,” Luis repeats, his voice rising in his familiar lilt, “dogs and cats and birds and ants, bro! My cousin Pedro says he had a whole tank of fish you know? And then the snap happened and he had only half the tank of fish!”

“That’s not exactly how it worked,” Maggie corrects, cautiously, “it was more random than that.”

Luis shrugs. “I don’t know about that ma’am. We lost DiCaprio but not Bieber, and that does not feel random, it feels mean. ”

“Aw bro, I’m sorry about Hope,” Luis says suddenly, switching gears the way he always does, meeting his eyes, and Luis’s sincerity threatens to undo him. Scott takes a deep breath. He tries to compartmentalize, but his brain goes straight into denial instead because if he’s alive isn’t it possible that Hope is too? 

The three disappearance veterans in the room don’t think so, and he doesn’t either, really, because he knows her and trusts her; she would have pulled him out if she had survived the dusting.

After Luis hugs him for the fifteenth time, Luis goes home, promising to return with the good bagels in the morning. Maggie goes upstairs, letting him have some private moments with his daughter. He and Cassie flop on the couch like they used to do when she was small. They sit for awhile and catch up, and Scott is incredibly relieved that it’s so easy to talk to her, just like before he disappeared. 

The guilt threatens to swallow him whole for leaving, even accidentally. In his head, she’s ten and he’s going to pick her up for a spaghetti dinner with Hope when she’s done with soccer practice. But in the new reality, she’s fifteen and she’s bringing him a cup of over sugared tea, the way he likes it.

“You gonna be ok tonight?”

“I’m gonna be fine tonight, Peanut.” He even manages a smile. Cassie, his bright, empathetic child, knows better than to believe him.

Twenty minutes later, Scott is on the couch, grossly, truly, not fine. It’s too quiet, too dark, and he’s too alone. For him, last night was peaceful, his brain quiet. The darkness was punctuated by the tiny little snores that Hope denies making, snores which had started right after he had shown her again just how good he is with his hands.

Last night, he had held her until she rolled over to sleep on her stomach. He had marveled over the promise in their relationship, their second chance, and how things after Germany finally, finally felt right again. 

Just that past morning he woke up with her hair in his mouth, never so happy that hair was in his mouth. 

And now he can’t really breathe with the pressure of her disappearance on his chest. Scott idly wonders if a heart attack is what will finally kill him. He stands up, paces for awhile in short little circles, runs his hands through his hair and across his face. He can’t quiet his brain, spinning about being lost in the Quantum Realm while some asshole snapped and Hope disappeared. 

Hope, who he just gratuitously kissed that morning while waiting for her parents to arrive on the rooftop of the parking garage to test the portal. 

Hope, who had shoved him away after a minute to tell him how unfunny he was because he did that specifically when he thought Hank might see. 

Hope, with her flashing eyes and her genius brain. Hope, with her razor sharp angles and glaring vulnerabilities. Hope, with her amazing body but terrible, terrible sweaters. Hope, with her big smile that she reserves basically only for her mother, but as of late, for him too. 

Hope, with whom he felt the strange, magnetic pull of awareness from the second he woke up at Hank’s house surrounded by bullet ants. 

Hope, with whom he is desperately, stupidly in love, and who disappeared into nothing without a goodbye. 

Sweaty and sick, Scott stands still with his hand on his forehead, unsure of how to slow his pulse rate, how to breathe, or how to keep from screaming. He thinks he might throw up. His five year old Xanax prescription is probably still in storage.

“Daddy?”

His five years in the future Cassie stands, looking uncertain, in the doorway again. “You’re not alright, are you.” 

“No, not at all.” She runs to him and hugs him tightly, and all he can think is of how tall she is now, as tall as Hope.

Scott had promised himself he would never leave Cassie again, not after Germany, when he almost ruined everything with her. He has done so many stupid things with the best of intentions, but they’re always at Cassie’s expense, and now he’s missed five more years. They sit together quietly, until she breaks the silence with a question.

“Daddy, are you going to rescue Hope?”

“I want to, but don’t know how, Peanut,” he says, voice breaking. “And I’m here now, with you. I shouldn’t go.”

Cassie considers him, thoughtfully, and takes his hand.

“You know, everybody thought you were dead but I didn’t believe it. Maybe you’re back for a reason. You just need to think about how to do it. I believe in you. You can save her. You can do anything.” 

Scott thinks that this unwarranted, unwavering blind faith from his daughter is why people have children. It’s gratifying, and because he’s generally an optimist even in the worst of circumstances, he feels a little more grounded. Or at least less like puking up the tub of ice cream Maggie let him eat. 

“I’m not Hope,” he disagrees, glumly. “I don’t have her brain.”

“You forget that you’re smart too, because you spend your time with geniuses.”

He smiles at her and nudges her with his shoulder affectionately. “How’d you get so wise?” 

Scott half-smiles, thinking. “Hope would have come up with a plan to kick Thanos’s ass back to whatever planet he came from in the first place. With step by step instructions. She’d have figured out how to use the Quantum Realm to go back in time and kick his ass twice by now,” he laughs, expecting Cassie to laugh with him. 

Cassie doesn’t laugh, and instead looks at him with Maggie’s eyes and his own maniacal grin. 

He grins back, just as maniacally, gobsmacked by his own ramble. “What if you can use the Quantum Realm to go back in time? What if you can control it somehow and actually time travel? We could go back in time and kick Grape Ape’s ass. Maybe not me. But maybe Captain America? Or the Falcon. Those guys. The Avengers.” 

“You’re an Avenger too,” Cassie reminds him. “You drew on the walls with Captain America.”

He looks back at Cassie, touches her familiar but unfamiliar face, smooths her hair. He hasn’t had enough time to really get to know her again, but his gut is screaming at him that he will, even if he follows through with this crazy idea to introduce time travel to superheroes.

Scott makes a decision. “In the morning, Luis and I need to fix that brown van so I can drive it and the portal to New York. Can you be in charge of finding me some snacks for the road?” 

Cassie claps her hands. “If you want company…”

“You’re the best kid on all the planets, Cassie, but your mom might kill me if I let you come too.” 

She nods. “One day though, you’re going to take me with you.” 

Scott kisses her forehead. “We can talk about it,” he says indulgently, “but for now, go to bed.”


	2. Whatever It Takes

Scott drives across the country in a van that quite frankly should not be able to drive down the block. He’s aware that there are millions of dollars of technology in the back of the van but he can’t bring himself to drive slow. 

He stops for gas and coffee, drinking enough of it that he can feel the buzz through his veins, not wanting to stop and sleep until absolutely necessary. 

Stopping to sleep at a rest stop in the backseat of the van reminds Scott of sleeping in prison. It’s a restless nap, at best, full of caffeine and sugar fueled dreams of the family he wants but can never have. In prison, it was dreams of Maggie and Cassie, of buying a house, of being respectable. Those dreams lasted until the divorce papers came in the mail, then he dreamed mostly of Cassie, the best thing he’s ever done. 

Tonight, on the road, his dreams are a jumbled mess of the Quantum Realm, Hope and Cassie. The colors swirl and he can hear both of them talking but he can’t tell what they’re saying. Scott wakes several times, sweaty and uncomfortable, waiting for Hope to pull him out of the Quantum Realm. Around five in the morning, he calls it quits on trying to sleep after waking from a very realistic dream of Hope straddling his hips on an exercise mat. After a quick tooth brushing and a fresh can of Red Bull, he’s back on the road.

The landscapes blur by as he drives. He drinks so much coffee and Mountain Dew that he’s twitching, his stomach is all acid, and he’s had to piss since what feels like Philadelphia, but he gets to upstate New York in one piece.

Adrenaline pushes him to the gates of the Avengers compound. He waves and flails at the intercom system, his nerves and bladder screaming for release. 

When the gates open and he’s greeted by Captain America and the Black Widow, Captain America rushes forward and grabs Scott’s shirt collar, roughly. 

“Who are you?”

“I’m Scott! Lang! Scott Lang!” 

“We thought you were dead,” the Black Widow says, gravely, in an explanation of why he’s being gripped like he might disintegrate. “Where have you been?”

“I’m not dead! It’s a long story, but I swear it’s me. You guys bought me my house because you felt bad that we all got caught. It was only me and Barton on house arrest because we have kids. My kid is Cassie. She was ten when I last saw her but now she’s fifteen.”

Captain America stares at him blankly so Scott keeps talking.

“You drive a shitty VW beetle. I once shook your hand for way too long. Way too long. It was creepy, but I’m not mad about it.”

The Black Widow tilts her head. Captain America nods. They look at each other, communicating silently. Cap loosens his grip but doesn’t let go yet.

“This is nice,” Scott finally says, clearing his throat, “but if you’re finished with the interrogation, could one of you maybe let me know where the facilities are? I’ve kinda been on the road for the past four days or so and, y’know.”

Captain America lets go of his shirt, shows him to the men’s room on the ground floor, and then Scott meets Cap and the Black Widow (“call me Natasha, please”) upstairs to pitch a time heist. 

They drive to Tony Stark’s house, because he is the smartest person, and they’re going to need his help.. 

They leave Tony Stark’s house, and Scott thinks Stark is being a selfish prick. All of Hank Pym’s insults about the Starks swirl and for one vindictive second, Scott had wanted to shout all of them at the back of Stark’s head as he walked away to his perfect family.

Saying no to the time heist is something Scott understands doing on an intellectual level. The plan came from Scott’s own brain, so he can admit it that it sounded fanciful. He also understands why Tony said no as a father, he really does: Tony cannot risk the existence of his daughter for a time heist. 

But on a primal level, the level where Scott will do anything for Cassie at any cost, he doesn’t understand it at all. You teach your children that if something breaks, you fix it if you can. Scott just lost five years with his kid that he wants back, goddamnit, and his kid is just as important as Stark’s kid. He lost Hope entirely and Hope is just as important to him as Pepper Potts is to Stark. He wants the same happy ending that Stark already has, and no, he doesn’t think it’s too much to ask when there’s a way to get it done. 

They are all fairly depressed when they return to the compound. Scott learns very quickly that Cap cannot cook at all and that Natasha has a hard time eating when she’s sad. While Natasha goes into her office to talk to War Machine (shit, the last time Scott saw him, he threw War Machine into an airplane in Germany), and Cap goes off to do something Scott assumes is incredibly patriotic, Scott puts together the spaghetti dinner that he had planned for Hope and Cassie, chatting animatedly with Cassie on FaceTime. 

Steve wanders into the kitchen looking more tired than Scott remembers, but definitely interested and hungry as he takes a peek into the pots on the stovetop. 

“She’s seems like a great kid,” Cap says, experimentally stirring a pot of sauce when Scott hangs up. Scott nods tiredly, resting his arms on the countertop and leaning on them for a moment. 

“I missed five more years of her life and even if I never get those five years back again, I’m lucky she’s still here. I know that, I really do. But if there’s something we can do to get everybody back… I’m not ready to give up yet.”

Cap starts getting plates for everybody, looking for a moment lost and sad in a way that Scott never expected to see. That look is gone so fast that Scott thinks he imagined it. “I hear you, Scott. Tomorrow morning, we’ll try Banner.”

**

Bruce Banner, a remarkably nice person given his reputation for anger, is immediately on board even with his misgivings about the theory. Despite his giant Hulk hands and the time travel incident where Scott managed to piss himself inside his own suit, Scott likes him.

Scott softens on Tony Stark when Stark comes to join them after all, apparently having figured out how to time travel without turning people into babies. Scott keeps his mouth shut even though the deal to get Stark to help involves bringing every snapped person back five years into the future with no safety net for what will happen when they get there. 

He feels uneasy, because if he’d been living for five years without Hope, coping with her disappearance, he’d worry incessantly about bringing her into the future. Not only about if they would be in the same headspace to handle a relationship, but also about her wellbeing in general once she came back after losing five years to all of the people who had lived them. Hell, that’s how he feels right now. And multiply that feeling for trillions of people? 

Scott thinks specifically of Cap, wonders who from the team is still here in this dystopia, and then suddenly feels really sad. Considering that he doesn’t see Wanda, or Sam Wilson, or the Winter Soldier hanging around this compound, he’s going to wager a guess that they’re gone. Maybe it’s just Cap and Natasha.

“Hey Cap,” he blurts, wanting to do something for the guy without admitting he’s doing something for the guy, “do you like tacos?”

Cap smiles a small smile. “I do like tacos.”

“Great. I’ll make tacos for lunch.”

“I’d offer to help, but… nobody wants that.”

Scott smiles, wanly, shooing him out of the kitchen. “I’ll call Cassie while I cook. You go do whatever it is you do.”

So, Scott makes tacos as the rest of the non-dusted Avengers make their way to the compound. He saves the last one for himself, and goes outside to enjoy a small moment of quiet before they get to work.

The ground shifts and shakes as a piece of alien tech lands. He loses most of the taco in the wind. War Machine whomps onto the ground too close for comfort, scaring the shit out of him, so he loses the rest of the taco. A hell of a way to learn that War Machine holds a bit of a grudge from Germany, he thinks, drolly. Shit.

The blue robot alien woman calls him an idiot. She’s probably been through a lot, so Scott tries not to take her insult to heart. He’s heard worse from Hank, and really, the whole time heist is his idea so she can shove it up her robotic ass.

Banner cheerily exits the compound and shares his tacos with Scott before leaving to collect Thor. 

When Banner and the trash panda come back with Thor, Thor looks like the past five years have been incredibly awful for him. It’s incredibly shocking. After being in prison and on house arrest, Scott doesn’t think it’s cool to kick a man when he’s down. Not even when he looks like Old Val Kilmer, and could probably use a shower. If they survive this heist, maybe somebody should try talking to the guy.

The remnants of the Avengers team meet up to plot and plan the time heist, which is way more complicated than Scott ever imagined. He feels like a guy who won a contest to be an Avenger for a day, which is to say he’s totally out of his element and wonders a few times how he can leave gracefully. When they start talking about going into space, his brain short circuits. First they’re talking about time travel, now it involves space aliens outside this galaxy, and he’s not emotionally equipped for this.

Keeping his cool while the talking trash panda calls him a puppy is a lot harder than it looks, but luckily there are lo mein noodles to keep him occupied.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to my good dude defcontwo for the assist on what to do with Captain America! You’re the best!


	3. A Respectable Man

Scott could not be more relieved when Clint Barton arrives from Japan and volunteers to be the guinea pig for the new and improved time machine instead of Scott. Scott is still disoriented from returning both as a baby and an old man during the last experiment, and if he’s being honest with himself, he’s a little tired of being the expendable part of missions.

He’s just wandering away from the platform to call and check in with Cassie when he hears Barton yelling from the men’s room about putting on the suit for time travel. 

“I mean it, how do you put this fuckin thing on,” Barton yells. “Why do these things have to be so tight, and is this the suit Lang peed in?” 

“No, it’s not, geez,” Scott yells back, indignant. “How do you even know about that?” 

“Lang,” Natasha says, coming up from Scott’s blind side, voice completely, unnervingly blank. “Everyone knows about that.”

“Even War Machine?”

“Especially War Machine.”

Scott makes a ‘yikes’ face. 

“That _is_ the suit I peed in.”

Natasha looks him, smiles a fraction of a smile, and says, “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

“If the two of you are done having your conference, a little help would be nice?”

“Flip you for who takes him the Vaseline?”

“Deal.”

***

The Avengers team focuses on finding the stones, something Scott has no input on at all. While they’re all figuring out where they’d need to go to time travel, Scott goes to the brown van to extract the tubes of Pym Particles they’ll need to pull off the heist. He isn’t sure how many tubes Hank has in the portal and he hopes there are enough for everybody who needs to go.

Scott would like to think that Hank would be the tiniest bit proud that Scott thought to use Pym Particles to save the world.

Scott thinks about Hank, undoubtedly dusted with Hope and Janet, and is a little surprised when he gets a little emotional about it. Hank is the one who saw some kind of potential in him, at least enough potential to be the guy he blackmailed into helping him take down Darren Cross. Scott is absolutely positive Hope could have done it herself, she’s easily the most capable person he knows, but he’s happy that Hank had brought him in because it gave him his life back. 

He thinks Hank might like him too. Right when they had started building the portal again, Scott had been alone with Hank, tinkering on the portal’s machinery. Hank had let him do a lot of the electrical work this time around without too much grumbling. The quiet between them had been a good quiet, so Scott had let it breathe.

Hank had other ideas, and asked Scott directly if he loved Hope. Scott had answered truthfully, that he had loved Hope for a long time. 

“Germany nearly broke her, you know,” Hank had accused, but his tone was lacking the usual judgment. “She wanted to be your partner, God knows why, when you’re about as inept as they come, but then you left her.”

“She is better than me in every way possible,” Scott had agreed, still feeling like the world’s biggest asshole, “and I was stupid for going to Germany without talking to her. To you.”

“That goes without saying. But I think you’ll work it out anyway. Hope will always be smarter than you and tougher than you, but you’ll support her. You won’t try to change her or make yourself the star. Your support makes her better, and she knows it. She needs it.” 

Hank had looked disgusted with himself afterward. “I can’t believe I’m saying any of this to you. Maybe I’m having a stroke.”

Scott had started to thank him for the closest thing to compliments that Hank has ever given him, but Hank had cleared his throat and then yelled at him for being a dipshit and using the wrong wrench instead. 

***

Scott returns with the Pym Particles and they all attempt to flesh out the separate heists for the stones. Scott is going with Cap, Banner and Tony Stark to 2012 to collect the mind stone, space stone, and time stone. Each impossible heist seems entirely possible after Cap gives them all a pep talk. He bonds with the trash panda over the motivational power of Captain America, and then they’re off, traveling through time and space. 

2012 is almost fun at first, joking with Stark and crossing the lines of professionalism by commenting on America’s ass. He also has some choice thoughts about 2012 Stark’s choice of body spray, because Axe? Really? They all ride high on adrenaline, giddy with the apparent success of the plan, until they inevitably fuck it up by not anticipating that they’d forget the small details of what they did a decade ago. Neither Stark nor Cap remembered 2012 Banner’s rage about the stairs, and what you don’t plan for in a heist is what always sinks you.

Scott should know; he got cocky, drove a car into a pool, and landed in prison.

Scott feels the bitterness of failure so acutely he wants to vomit. They have the mind stone, but some guy who needs a shampoo and some sunlight vanished with the space stone. He needs to have a good panic to get it out of his system, so he starts yelling at Stark because quite honestly, it would be a cold day in hell before he would yell at Captain America.

Cap and Stark go off to who knows where with the Pym Particles they need to get home. They’re crazy, bringing out the worst in each other as they navigate the fractures in their friendship. This side trip seems to mend these fractures, but it is still crazy. Scott goes back to 2023 gladly, because he wants no part of an unplanned extra heist. 

Of course, with the way time travel works through their GPS bracelets, they all arrive at the same time in 2023 no matter what they were doing or for how long they were in the past. He doesn’t want to think too hard about it because it doesn’t make any sense to him at all. He is still annoyed with Cap and Stark for giving him the brush off and he is about to tell them so, but something is very wrong.

Natasha is gone. At no point in time did anybody ever say that the soul stone requires suicide for the greater good, and Scott can’t help but be annoyed by the poor planning that let them ignore something so monumental. The team around him falls apart. He feels like he’s intruding on other people’s grief, probably because he is intruding on other people’s grief, and the silence is deafening. 

***

Banner and Thor vie for who puts on the gauntlet to snap. Thor is a split second away from offering to die to snap his fingers because his depression has made him feel that worthless, but in the end, Banner does it. 

The first thing he notices after Banner snaps is the increased number of birds. A small blossom of hope unfurls in his chest as Barton’s cell phone starts ringing. Scott is heartened to think that Hope is alive somewhere in San Francisco. Maybe she’s looking for him right now the way he’s been looking for her. 

Scott is just about to yell for everybody to come look at the birds when the world explodes.

***

Scott shrinks down to ant size when the explosion hits because it’s much easier for him to survive when he’s small. His comm system in his helmet is unscathed and he can hear War Machine calling for help. He’s momentarily grateful because it’s finally something he’s well equipped to do, to get into a tiny place that’s otherwise sealed off, and save people. 

Dusted heroes start calling in through the comms while he makes his way to War Machine’s location, and he is man enough to admit he chokes back tears when he hears Falcon say “on your left.” 

Still underground and ant sized, Scott gets to where War Machine is in the nick of time, grows to Giant-Man size, scoops up War-Machine, Rocket and the Hulk, and breaks out of the rubble to deposit everybody into the fray.

Orange rings of light are opening over the ruins of the Avengers compound, and it takes every ounce of Scott’s already tested self control not to gawk as people keep pouring out of them. Noticing that a large number of these people are superheroes of some variety, he can’t help it, he presses his comm that goes between his helmet and Hope’s and calls for her. His gut tells him Hope is there. His brain tells him to wait for actual communication.

Anything he might have received back from Hope is swallowed by Cap’s command: “Avengers Assemble.”

So they do.

Giant-Man is way more effective against the space army, but it is ineffective at finding Hope. They’re playing a giant game of high stakes keep away with the gauntlet, trying to keep the stones from Thanos, and he needs to focus, not be a lovesick moron. 

When chatter on the comms starts talking about needing a time machine, he volunteers the portal in the van. It’ll take him 10 minutes to set it up, and he’s about to go small, when out of nowhere, there’s a hand on his arm. Hope is right there in front of him, mask retracted even though they’re in a battle so she can see his face. Scott is a lovesick moron, he can’t help it, so he retracts his mask to look back at her. When Hope calls Captain America “Cap” he think it might be fate. Whoa.

It really isn’t the time for him to do anything about his jumble of excessively sappy, lovesick feelings so he takes her hand and they fly to the portal together.

She takes one look into the backseat, calls it a mess, and ducks down to make sure the connections work. He wants to joke about how the explosion must have made it messy, but it’s all of his coffee cups, Red Bull cans and Snickers wrappers from the cross country journey so he keeps quiet on that topic for now. 

Scott has to hotwire the car to get power to the portal and Hope watches, eyes warm. “You shouldn’t encourage me like this,” he warns, lightly. “That look in your eyes says you don’t want a respectable man at all.”

She shakes her head, but her smile is enormous and just for him. It really is too bad that they need to go save the world. The car engine finally catches, ruining the moment, so they rejoin the fight. 

The van explodes when Thanos hits it with a javelin of some sort, and Scott worries at a very inopportune time about what he’ll tell Luis about the van, if he ever gets to tell Luis about the van.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to defcontwo for both the Natasha assist and the “is this funny?” test paragraph assists!
> 
> Also thank you to clones_and_gallifrey for the beta reads!


	4. Get a Room

One minute he’s Giant-Man and he’s punched a space millipede and stepped on the purple Teletubby; the next minute the space millipedes, demon dogs and Thanos have turned to ash. Scott doesn’t know how the battle ended, but Thanos and his army have been reduced to dust, blowing away on the wind as suddenly as they arrived. 

Scott sinks to his knees on the upturned earth to catch his breath after going big as Giant-Man for so long. He retracts the mask on his suit, gasping for air. There’s noise from every direction, people everywhere laughing, crying, screaming. It’s too much, so he just kneels, sweaty and panting. He lost sight of Hope after they fixed the van, so his heart is in his throat. 

He shouldn’t have worried. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Hope fly up and then there she is, full sized, next to him. She retracts her mask and smiles, the smile starting at her mouth and going the way to her eyes. He can’t string two words together but she doesn’t seem to mind, and then he’s got his arms around her.

“Oh God, I thought you were dead,” he chokes into her hair. “Dusted. Whatever.”

Hope kisses him square on the mouth. “Not dead.”

Scott rests his forehead against hers, holds her hands. He breathes her in, stress sweat and all. “You have no idea what happened, do you. Those aliens that turned to dust just now, that was you. You were gone, Hope. Just gone.”

Hope closes her eyes, leaning into him. “We’re both here now.”

“God I’m glad this worked,” he sighs, voice shaking, “I don’t know what I would have done if it didn’t.”

“I don’t know what worked,” Hope says, pulling away with questions in her eyes, her voice a little shaky too. “One second I felt faint and then the next I was back on top of that parking garage and the van was gone.” 

She swallows thickly. “We yelled for you. But you were gone.” Her eyes shift to the side and well up, so she wipes at them impatiently. His heart tugs.

“Oh _Hope_ ,” he says, feelingly, looking at her with all of the compassion he can muster, reaching for her again.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she sniffles, batting at his hands, “or I can’t finish my story.” 

Scott quirks an eyebrow, not letting go of her. “Go on, then.”

“The orange portal opened and a sorcerer came out, told me I needed to go with her to fight a battle in New York. Naturally, I told her to fuck herself.”

“Naturally,” he agrees, laughing.

“But then she said you were here and needed my help, so I went with her.” 

“Thank you, I always need your help.” He wants to say it as a joke, to ease tension, but instead it comes out entirely sincere because he does.

In response, Hope pushes her entire face against his chest, nose into his sternum, because showing too much emotion always embarrasses her. Scott rubs her back soothingly because he knows feelings are hard. Her question about what happened is muffled against his suit.

He doesn’t know where to start, so he just explains what he knows: he was pulled out of the Quantum Realm somehow, he looked for her, she wasn’t there. He was in a storage facility full of rats. He found Cassie, who told him what happened with Thanos, by the way Cassie is now fifteen and _so tall_ , and then he drove across the country to go with the Avengers to figure out how to time travel to save Hope. Then they did.

She pulls back again to look at him, blinks, and laughs, just a little bit. “Scott. You drove the oldest brown van across America and then traveled time to save me?”

“Well, yeah,” Scott replies, exasperated, “of course. If I have to flash forward five years in the future, I want to do it with you.” 

The magnitude of his gesture is well, wow.

“I love you,” she blurts suddenly, and stares at him, like her declaration was so unplanned that it surprised her. Her dark green eyes are so very shiny.

Scott’s insides freeze and then wobble because never in a million time branches would he ever have expected her to say that. He grips her shoulders, or maybe she grabs him, and he kisses her with all of the longing and despair he’s felt for the past several weeks without her. He doesn’t know if he’s ever kissed anybody like this, and if he has, it’s certainly never been in an open field full of smoldering rubble. It would be romantic if it wasn’t so surreal.

If Hope is startled by his intensity, she doesn’t show it. She sighs and softens against him. The kiss catches fire, a blur of lips and tongues and hands, and he wants her more than he’s ever wanted any other person in his life. Scott’s knees actually feel weak with wanting. 

“For Odin’s sake, Puppy, get a goddamn room,” Rocket exclaims, loudly, a little shocked at how filthy the kiss is, and a lot shocked that it’s Scott doing the kissing. “I came over here to thank you for saving my life, but you’re too busy sucking face to pay attention.” 

They pull apart, both red-faced and dazed at the intrusion, Hope’s arms still around his back. She looks at Rocket, clearly ready to yell at him for the interruption, and does a double take. “Is that a..?”

“Am I a what, lady? And if you say ‘rabbit…’” 

Hope opens her mouth to speak, but before she can, a walking tree branch tackles the raccoon to the ground. For once, Scott is speechless. A walking tree branch. 

“I am Groot!” The tree branch seems excessively happy.

“Aw buddy, me too,” Rocket says, affectionately, “me too.” 

Scott blinks, shakes himself off for a second, and turns back to Hope, looking her in the eyes. “I love you.” 

“Ain’t that sweet,” Rocket mocks, with a smirk, but there’s no animosity whatsoever as he pats Scott on the back of his leg in gratitude. 

The raccoon eyes Hope, and gestures to Scott. “You got your work cut out for you with this one.”

***

Unfortunately, not everybody is as lucky as they are. There is a commotion around the spot where Scott last saw Thanos, and people are headed that way. He, Hope, Rocket and the tree branch drift toward the commotion and stand in the periphery, waiting for some sort of explanation for the melee.

When it comes, it knocks Scott sideways. Tony Stark, the guy who definitely grew on him the most while they were heist buddies in 2012, is dead.

***

Scott does not understand at all why they can’t use some of the remaining Pym Particles to go get Tony, or Natasha, for that matter. He says this to Hope multiple times, and he’s so gratified when she agrees that it makes no sense at all why it isn’t the goal to rebuild a Quantum portal and get them back. With how often Banner says they need to return the stones, Scott would be surprised if the didn’t rebuild the portal, so why can’t they go back to get their fallen friends? Fallen friends who made huge, selfless sacrifices. 

They decide together to table this discussion for now and to talk to Hank later about the idea, though the thought of Hank Pym actively working to resurrect Tony Stark from the dead would be entirely laughable if the mood wasn’t so somber.

The compound is completely non-operational after the battle, and the brown van has been blasted to oblivion. Wakandans leave by portal back to Wakanda, but the Avengers stay. Hope holds his hand, a huge comfort now that they have to face the world.

“We need to figure out a place to stay and something to eat for everybody,” Scott thinks out loud, surveying the damage around them. He suddenly smells himself inside the suit and makes a small noise of disgust. “And, I don’t know about you, Van Dyne, but I could use a shower.”

“You’re right, you could use a shower,” she agrees, grinning when he playfully pushes her face away. 

“I don’t know where we’ll stay,” he muses, “that is, assuming you want to stay with me here in the middle of a battlefield.” 

Hope rolls her eyes and pulls on their joined hands in a “what do you think” gesture.

“I’m staying with you. But why are you suddenly so concerned about the eating habits of superheroes?” 

“If I didn’t make dinner, Cap would have boiled a pot of water, dropped a whole potato in it and call it dinner,” he whispers. “The rest of them aren’t much better. We ordered take out more often than even you do.”

“I can cook!”

“Really Hope, you have to stop lying about cooking, it’s pathological.”

“I don’t know why I love you so much when you’re so insulting,” she grumbles.

“But you do love me,” he says, grinning at her.

“I do,” she answers, cautiously, giving him a tiny stink eye.

“Enough to go get groceries for some depressed superheroes?”

“I guess.”

They enlist Sam Wilson, Valkyrie, Peter Quill, and Happy Hogan’s credit card for a grocery run, even though they’re not dressed for company in their costume suits, so they get accosted at the store. They finally arrive back and start making sandwiches. Scott makes sure he gets an extra bag of Doritos for Thor and candy for Wanda, just because.

Tony Stark’s nearest and dearest depart for Tony’s house by the lake to make funeral arrangements. The remaining sorcerers make bright orange portals to assist them. Everybody else hangs out for awhile by the crushed compound, trading stories about Tony. When it gets late, people start leaving via portal to go home. 

Scott and Hope, bone weary and exhausted, head back to San Francisco to find a place to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So ah, you may have noticed that it’s now a 5 part story. My bad!
> 
> Comments and kudos are life; find me at tumblr under the same name.


	5. Epilogue

Hope and Scott arrive in San Francisco through a magic portal of light and if Scott is being honest with himself, it’s only like the sixth weirdest thing to have happened to him in the past twenty four hours. They’re standing by the Golden Gate Bridge, clearly the only San Francisco monument their sorcerer knew about when they asked to go home. 

They’re still in their suits, and Scott feels disgusting, like he’s marinated in five years worth of sweat. He thinks the word “exhausted” isn’t descriptive enough anymore to explain how he feels. 

“We should get a hotel,” Hope declares, taking stock of the situation in the clinical way she always does. “You’re asleep on your feet, which means shrinking and flying is not an option, and I don’t want to think about where to go now that it’s five years in the future.”

“I crashed on Maggie’s couch the one night I was back,” Scott agrees, “so that’s obviously not going to work tonight. But I don’t have my wallet, because my wallet is in my pants that got blown up by a space alien. And as cute as you thought it was when I hotwired the van, it’s a crime, Hope, and I’m —”

Hope pulls out a matchbox car and a tiny remote, and suddenly they have a red sedan. 

“What? Where? How?”

Hope shrugs and grins.

“Van Dyne, did Hank put pockets in your suit?”

Her grin turns a bit sheepish. “I didn’t want to brag.”

“Ugh! You always get the best stuff! I don’t suppose you have pants in there? Or money? I don’t have Happy Hogan’s credit card anymore because that would be committing more crime, and —”

Hope pulls out a very large roll of cash. 

Scott’s voice raises an octave, “What? Did you rob a bank?” 

“My dad gave me a bunch of cash in case I needed to bail you out of jail.”

Scott’s eyes bug out of his head. “Hank thought I was in _jail?_ ”

“The sorceress said you needed help but she didn’t say what kind,” Hope laughs, mostly because the look on his face is priceless. “Come on. I’ll get us some necessities and a hotel room, but only if you’re a very good boy.”

They get in her car, and she’s driving to go pay in cash for a hotel room. “I feel so tawdry,” he quips, as she squeezes him encouragingly on the knee. 

One stop at a 24-hour superstore later, Hope has returned to the car with a few bags. Scott rummages through them and is pleased to note there are sweatpants, boxers, and t-shirts, all in his size. She has also bought toothbrushes and toothpaste, a new pre-paid phone, and a surprise black eyeliner pencil. He loves how even Hope Van Dyne couldn’t make it out of the store without an unnecessary purchase. He’s about to remark on the necessity of the eyeliner when he finds a large box of condoms at the bottom of the bag. 

He holds up the box and raises both eyebrows at her. “So you think I’m some kind of sure bet here?”

She raises her eyebrows right back. “Yes.” 

“ _Awesome_.”

**

The hotel isn’t fancy, but it’s very clean. Hope opens the door, flicks on the light, and looks at him over her shoulder. 

“Why don’t I —”

“I’m going to text Cassie while you —”

They both stop and smile at each other. 

“You shower while I text Cassie and let her know we’re ok and that this is the number to give to Hank and Janet and Luis? But not to call us until like, noon?”

“You read my mind.” 

Hope disappears into the bathroom, and Scott can hear when she turns on the water. He texts Cassie because it’s 2AM and he doesn’t want to wake her, but she responds immediately that she’s glad they’re ok and that she wants to see Hope as soon as possible. Teenagers. Scott smiles at the idea of being able to bring Hope home to Cassie.

The shower is still running and despite his exhaustion and his backache from hell and the infinite layers of dirt and sweat on his body, he shucks his suit on the ground, grabs a condom just in case with a “you never know” kind of shrug, and knocks lightly on the bathroom door. 

He pokes his head into the bathroom, foggy with nice smelling shower steam. “Hope? You need some help washing your back?”

Her wet face, with her brilliant eyes shining with mischief, appears from a crack in the curtain. “What took you so long?”

Scott doesn’t need to be asked twice.

***

Scott wakes up in the hotel bed at some unknown time the next day, where he and Hope had passed out very quickly after their shower adventure in a tangle of limbs and fresh out of the wrappings cotton. Hope’s hair is in his mouth, and her back is warm against his front. He experimentally slides his hands underneath the oversize t-shirt she has on and is intrigued because she’s otherwise naked. Scott debates for a few seconds if he should wake her, but then lets his hands continue wandering. 

Hope can’t wake up slowly, instead she’s always awake all at once, and this time is no different. In a blur of movement that he can’t understand or explain, but maybe it’s a horrible misuse of parkour, she’s now on top of him, straddling his hips just like his caffeine fueled dream on the road. God, she really is the best.

“Yes please,” he murmurs, and she laughs a husky little just woke up laugh. 

“Okay, but just this one time,” she teases, grinning down at him as the t-shirt sails over her head. 

“That’s a lie, it won’t be just this—,” he starts, but he can’t finish the sentence.

***

An hour and a half and another shower later, they’ve checked out of the hotel, picked up Cassie from Maggie’s, and now they’re on the way to the house where Scott did his house arrest. 

Luis has been living at the house for the past five years and has transferred most of X-Con’s business to the first floor because he and Kurt couldn’t really afford the office when both Scott and Dave were gone. Luis had put a lot of Scott’s belongings into storage when it got too hard to handle that Scott was dead, but Luis has already made arrangements to get it out of there now that he’s not.

Luis and Kurt are at the house when Scott arrives with Hope and Cassie. The reunion is loud, boisterous, and bittersweet. Scott can’t believe he missed five years of their lives, either, but he’s so proud of what they’ve done with the business and themselves. 

For now, Scott can have his old bedroom in the attic back, and Luis will keep his room on the second floor until they figure out what to do with the house. Luis makes some excuse about needing to see his cousin Ignacio’s family now that half of it is back, and that he’ll be gone a few days so Scott and Hope can have the house to themselves.

On his way out, Luis mentions city wide fireworks for all the unsnapped people, and that they’re going to be pretty spectacular, so they better not miss it by staying in the bedroom. He winks theatrically and then yells “peace out bro!” as he leaves. 

Scott takes his words to heart and has Cassie come over to watch the fireworks with him and Hope, who hasn’t left the house since she got there. They sit on the steps outside, Cassie lounging on his knee, as she tells them about the world in the past five years. Hope sits across from them, smiling. 

“You’re too far away,” Scott complains, gently. “Come over here.”

Before the snap, before Scott went on a tear across the country and through time to save her, they were slowly rebuilding their relationship after Germany. Hope had stayed the night sometimes, but not all the time, and they had been working on fixing the trust issues even though it was hard. Her affection had been a bit cautious, and her heart a bit guarded, though it had been clear that she cared and wanted to work with him to be together.

Now, after the snap, Hope is unreserved with him. Scott reaches the arm that isn’t around Cassie out to her, and she scoots over into the space next to him without question. Hope leans against him, curling into his warmth, and takes his hand in both of hers, lacing their fingers. 

As the fireworks explode in the sky, and the women in his life chat about everything under the sun, Scott feels ready to face whatever comes next. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, that’s it for now! I truly appreciated the kudos, comments and other feedback. If you want to yell in all caps about Hope and Scott with me, I’m Dorasolo on tumblr and DorasoloSaysHey on Twitter (it’s new!)


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